Re: Messy orthography (Re: Sound change rules for erosion)

Quoting JS Bangs <jaspax@...>:

> Quoting Isidora Zamora <isidora@...>:
>
> > And I should add that, since I have thought it through over the last 24
> > hours, I think that things get kind of messy when you want to pluralize
> > a noun ending in a consonant.  It might form its plural by labialization,
> > or
> > it might form it in -Vn.  Unfortunately, you simply have to know - and
> > if
> > it forms its plural in -Vn, then you simply have to know which vowel.
> > It
> > is entirely conceivable that there could be another word <tatw> in the
> > singular with the plural of <tatwon>.  It could be any one of the five
> > vowels.
>
> While this idea in itself is plausible and naturalistic (and I like it),
> you might want to think about which one of the five vowels is generalized
> for use on new words, and if this ending perhaps starts to replace the
> others. For example, surely the five vowels didn't occur with exactly the
> same frequency in the proto-lang, and the one(s) that were more common
> would have survived on more plurals and come to be viewed as regular and
> then spread to other words. I'm reminded of Welsh, which has had a very
> similar history and so inherits a rediculously large number of plural
> formations--but only one or two of those are active for neologisms.
Telenian has ended up with a similar system on a similar path. A word ending
in a consonant can pluralize in -en, -an, -on, -in, or -un, in falling order
of frequency, but neologisms invariably get the -en pl. The pls in -in and -un
are very rare, and would likely long since had disappeared altogether without
the conserving influence of a standard spelling.

The few nouns ending in a vowel pluralize in -n.

                                                     Andreas